He also permitted a certain quantity of wine
and spirits from the prize to be landed, for the immediate accommodation
of those who had their crops to secure, and to prevent the impositions to
which they were subject in being obliged to procure them from a second or
third hand.
On the 24th the _Reliance_ and _Francis_ schooner returned from
Norfolk Island, with the relief of the military, having been absent on
that service between seven and eight weeks.
About ten o'clock of the night of the same day, the log gaol at
Parramatta was wilfully and maliciously set on fire, and totally
consumed. The prisoners who were confined were with difficulty snatched
from the flames, but so miserably scorched, that one of them died in a
few days. This building was a hundred feet in length, remarkably strong,
and had been constructed with much labour and expense.
The rewards which had been formerly held out upon similar occasions were
now offered to any man or woman who would come forward with evidence
sufficient to convict such diabolical incendiaries before the court of
criminal judicature; and the inhabitants were called upon by that duty
which every man owed to society, as well as to his own individual
interest, to use every means in their power to discover the perpetrators
of such horrid mischief, which in its extent, involved the lives of their
fellow-creatures.
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